Valley of Flowers adjudged best at IFFLA

MUMBAI: Pan Nalin’s epic love story Valley of Flowers won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature at the recently concluded fifth Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA).

The Audience Choice Award went to John Jeffcoat’s romantic comedy Outsourced. The fifth edition of the IFFLA concluded at the ArcLight Hollywood with the LA Premiere of Rajnesh Domalpalli’s Vanaja, which had won the Best Debut Feature winner at the Berlin International Film Festival.

The film also won special mention for Debut Feature film. The grand jury prize for Best Documentary went to Q2P directed by Paromita Vohra, while the grand jury prize for Best Short was bagged by Tea Break directed by Srinivas Sunderrajan. Among the audience awards, the Best Feature Film award went to Outsourced, directed by Jeffcoat, while the Best Documentary Film honour went to Divided We Fall, directed by Sharat Raju.

This year, the festival paid tribute to acclaimed actress, poet, painter and writer Deepti Naval. As part of the tribute, IFFLA showcased three films of her most renowned performances that included Kamla, Panchvati and I Am Alive (Main Zinda Hoon).

As part of the fifth year celebrations, the festival added two new programmes – “Bollywood By Night,” which highlighted some of the most popular Bollywood Films of all times, including the 20th anniversary screening of Shekhar Kapur’s Mr India. The second addition was the IFFLA EcoVision, a new programme that aims to spread ecological awareness to coincide with Earth Day.

The six-day festival kicked off on 17 April 2007 with the LA premiere of Jag Mundhra’s Provoked, and showcased 36 films including 11 US premieres and three world premieres with the majority of the filmmakers in attendance.